Another 12,000 Aussies made it huge last year

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The number of Australians with at least $US1 million ($1.43 million) to invest jumped 11 per cent to an estimated 117,000 last year, thanks to property and share investments, according to a study released yesterday.

The increase, representing some 12,000 local investors, put Australia in the top 10 countries by growth rate of wealthy investors in Merrill Lynch and Capgemini's study of high net worth individuals.

"Australia's strong performance was driven largely by healthy increases in GDP, the ... strength of the domestic real estate sector and the continuing resilience of the local sharemarket," said Tom Alexy, Australian head of Merrill Lynch's global client group.

The study, which organisers said aimed to understand the investment needs of wealthy punters, defines high net worth individuals as those with at least $US1 million in financial assets excluding their primary residential property.

One finding shows that wealthy Australians have close to double the global average of 17 per cent of their assets invested in property.

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"There's plenty of research globally about the Australian [property] market being the most geared in the world," said Peter Opie, Merrill Lynch investment vice president. "It's part of the Australian psyche."

Equity investments also paid off with the Australian sharemarket rising 11 per cent last year.

The average wealth of the 117,000 Australians listed in the survey was $US3.2 million compared with a global average of $US3.7 million while the total wealth of the Australian list jumped 12 per cent to $US368 billion.

Many Australians on the list are successful business people who have started businesses and then sold them, organisers said.

Globally, there were an estimated 7.7 million high net worth individuals last year, an increase of 7.5 per cent or 500,000 on the previous year.

The influence of Chinese economic growth in the study's findings was outstanding, organisers said, with China and five of its major trading partners featuring in the top 10 for growth rates.

The Merrill study estimates the number of high wealth individuals by using IMF and World Bank statistics and then estimating the distribution of the wealth across the population.